I.T. drop in clinic?!

[Rhi]

oh dear...the i.t. teacher just cornered me while i was minding my own business on the computer and asked me if i thought that the sixth form would want a drop in clinic for the i.t. retarded...

...i tried so hard not to laugh.

tbh i think most people in my year are happy as long as they can work myspace, itunes and msn :rolleyes:

[Knight ArmagoN]

ROFL

not a bad i dea though

[CyberDrac]

I think most of our staff need it more than the kids, although I do worry about the ICT skills of some of the kids, shockingly poor, I've had year 10s recently come to me and ask how to word process, and one sixthformer has only just asked me for his login, so he's managed to avoid anything to do with the school network since September!

CD

[KingDaveRa]

Get it all the time at the uni, from both students and staff. The worst faculty is the nurses - great carers, but they haven't got a clue about computers.

It'd be very easy to do rudimentary training of kids lower down the years, when they are younger, but in so many cases the teachers know less than the kids anyway.

[CyberDrac]

I really do dispair of some ICT teachers, the syllabus is awful, and they really put emphasis in the wrong places. They teach little or nothing which is of any use/value in the real world and what they do teach they teach poorly, I cringe everytime I have to sit through an ICT lesson. The DT people are worse, they have Corel Draw but no-one knows how to use it aport from me, I've offered to teach the teachers but in the last two years they've never asked for help and as a result the stuff the kids produce is shockingly poor, the kids that ask for help from me produce stuff which is ten times better than their classmates because they are told how to do things properly.

ICT in schools is a JOKE!

CD

[Screwball]

indeed CD

[TheDon]

In the school I went to ICT was only taught in year 7, after that you had to wait to year 10 before you could take it again as an optional subject. The standard of teaching was ridiculous, and when it came round to year 10 90% of the class didn't have a clue what they were doing so half the time we should have been learning the syllabus was spent teaching people the basic skills they should have learnt years before.

I really do feel sorry for people that have no contact with computers other than during their school days.

[Er00]

We were forced to do ICT GCSE in yr 9 and it was a complete joke, had to write a spreadsheet then write up about how we wrote it....so all that actually needed handng in was the writeup, I got away with just writing about the example spreadsheet that the teacher helpfully put in the shared area on the network to show us basically what to do...

I think teaching teachers about the computers would be a lot better than teaching sixth formers, as most of us have made it this far, and those likely to want to use a computer will have done so already... ;P We were brought up with computers, as many older people like reminding us (or at least those I used to teach about computers XD), and as such, through some kind of osmosis, most of us have picked up stuff like "how to use word" etc to a pretty decent standard, or at least a high enough standard for what needs doing.

[WhiteKnight]

This is because when you ask most of them what computer they have at home they`ll probably say "Xbox" or "playstation"....

[no friends]

Most teachers mark you work with a tick if you have got the general feel to the question and it shows some mediocre form of the answer, if you have missed just a word out in the discription that is.

Our IT teacher is inhumanely precise... its untrue. On our coursework after it having a second look at by other teachers, it would ofter go up a grade. Its so ludicrously excruciating >_<



Our DT teacher, when using the schools free CAD program (which is amazingly ****), he does go on... alot. He knows how to use it, after taking a course to qualify him on to teach using it.

But, i did learn more by just spending the time he was explaining, to experiment for myself. Therefore, i learnt a fair bit more than the average "how to round the corners off this really craply textured cube".

[Neon]

Heh, im 100% self taught :)

Just a few things learnt in my degree. Im quite surprised to find this actually, i kinda thought most kids these days were more technically apt.

But it makes sense, a greater affinity for technology, but as pc's progress so does the level at which they operate and they become more complicated to use. So i guess people do need to teach.

Who'd be a teacher, takes balls of brass these days. Respect to those who do teach kids < 18 i certainly couldnt do it.

[Killy]

the only things i learned whilst in school was how quickly to alt tab when a teacher come round so i didn't get caught not doing work (as i'd finished it two days before) and how quickly i can bazooka someone in the face at duke nukem 3d
the rest was either self taught or taught by people who actually know what the **** they're on about.

[Pru]

i found the ICT in my school so poor i dropped it asap. the teachers are awful and only last about half a year untill they quit. in yr 9 we were made to do coursework, and then our teacher took off without saying, we were left not knowing what we had to do, and then the school blamed us for not handing in the work! and then they lost what we did, im so glad i dont do IT anymore at school.

[Belfar]

Hmm when i went to school ICT didnt exist we had a national curriculum certificate in I.T. was worth half a GCSE :p:

[GeeDee]

Originally posted by CyberDrac
ICT in schools is a JOKE!

That's a very sweeping statement to make. :)

Our ICT teaching is excellent - just introduced DIDA / CIDA to replace GCSE ICT and the D&T Dept produce some amazing stuff.

Depends on both the courses and the teachers, as well as the resources and whether it's a major focus for the school or not. :)

[CyberDrac]

Unfortunately it is also a very accurate statement to make.

Our ICT department have also adopted DiDA, and while there is a little more emphasis on real world situations it is still largely hampered by ICT teachers you have never seen ICT used outside of the classroom and often miss the point that the coursework is aiming to put over. The resources are incredible in our school, but somehow the end results don't reflect this.

I regret to say that a lot of it boils down to the teaching, and I have sat there and winced while the teachers have trotted out verbatim what was on the screen and you can tell that they didn't understand a single word they just uttered and that becomes even more obvious when questioned by the kids and all they can do is reword what is in front of them and end up spouting half truths and misconceptions.

I would love to praise the ICT in our school, but despite my best efforts it is mediocre at best.

CD

[GeeDee]

Sure, but i'm only saying that it's not the same everywhere.

Much of our intake are certainly nowhere near A* kids, but the teaching is really very good indeed and they produce some great stuff.

I guess it depends on the callibre of the staff. We're very lucky in that respect at the moment. :)

[__OpenGL__]

I must admit that my experience with ICT orientated courses has been very poor.

Did double award GCSE ICT and got one of the lowest grades in my group despite having more working knolege than anybody else in the group.

Teaching standard was quite good in my opinion but the course required writing of huge reports and essays etc, something I find very hard.

Left and did a BTEC IT course at college the next year. (where I was belatedly diagnosed with dyslexia) Teaching standard varied hugely between classes. Again emphasis was put on writing essays and reports as opposed to real world usefull information. We got support in some lessons and not in others - In the lessons I had support in I rpoduced work with destinction grade, in the rest of the classes I was left lost not knowing what to put down to paper (tho I could have discussed and explained what to say with someone - knew the answer but couldnt work out how to word it)

Likewise I also achieved only the lowest grade on the course despite having a vastly larger amount of working knolege. of using computers, which was shown in some lessons where I could explain something 'better' than the way the lecturer kept rewording it.

Can we have IT courses that teach usefull stuff and dont need an english degree to complete? :confused: :rolleyes:

[UberMonkey]

i did my work experience at a primary school (couldnt be bothered finding anything so my highschool assigned it) the teacher had no idea how to remove a hyperlink from a picture... and she is teaching these kids about ict -.-

[Er00]

Originally posted by __OpenGL__
I must admit that my experience with ICT orientated courses has been very poor.

Can we have IT courses that teach usefull stuff and dont need an english degree to complete? :confused: :rolleyes:

I completely agree, I wasn't lowest in teh year by a long way, but lots of people got As who didn't really deserve them in terms of knowledge of computers, whereas I, who I think most people in my year would agree am a complete computer geek, got a C, which is a pass, but only just :p The main reason I got such a bad mark (or at least bad in terms of I should have got a lot better mark for a course based around using a computer...) is because, although I have good English skills in terms of using English in an everyday basis, writing letters, using spelling, punctuation and grammar etc, I'm *terrible* at writing coursework, no matter for what subject (except strangely physics, which had the easiest coursework out of all the sciences at GCSE :S).

Tbh, what's wrong with IT GCSE is the same things that are wrong with the education system as a whole. I have so many issues with it. Not entirely because it seems to be based on things I'm bad at (ie coursework and learning facts by rote) though that's probably some of it, but it just seems to be a stupid waste of time in a lot of cases, not really teaching about the subject, but teaching how to pass the exams, which don't tend to be in a useful, realistic kind of format or asking questions that are based on real-life situations etc. For example, we've been playing around a lot trying to fit a subwoofer into a car, having completely failed to get power from the battery (due to an extra radiator blocking off the grommet that we needed to get to to pass wires through) we decided to think of other ways to deal with the problem. We kinda decided to try getting an exra battery in the boot and hook it up to that, given that the sub was 100w, we had to figure out what gauge wire, what battery, how long the battery would last etc, etc, etc. Most physics courses teach power/current/voltage in an entirely abstract way, but it's very easy to make it link in with real life (as shown in the above example), which, in my opinion would help people learn (or at least help people like me, who find it extremely hard to learn things by rote).

Anyway, I'll stop ranting about the education system now, as it's unlikely to change anything. The one good thing I will say about it is AS exams are a blessing. Quite a few people complain about them, but I enjoyed the chance to take a completely random subject for AS that I could drop, and the modular system means that if exams get screwed up for any reason, there's always a chance to retake (I was on antibiotics during half my summer exams, those half were the ones I did worst at, I'm glad I had the chance to retake them in January.)

[Dagan]

Originally posted by CyberDrac
ICT in schools is a JOKE!

Agreed. We support at least 400 schools. Though whilst it is mainly for the MIS side of things, some of the stuff we see/hear about is shocking.

[Switch`]

ICT in schools is ALL about the staff. when i was at school. I failed IT long Course....... then re-took it on friday afternoons at my old school (while attending college 40mins away) and compleated the 2 year course in alittle over 2 months of fridays. anyway.

I think it has alot todo with the teaching staff and Grouping for class's. for some arcane reason my school used a grouping system for IT and Science's at GCSE level based on which group you were put into in year 7..... which was based on Friends and which school you came from (put the kids from the same primary school in the same group etc)
Anyway. This falls over very quickly when you have Me a Top Set student in a group full of (no offence) Farmers who spent most of their time looking for porn. and thus the teacher had to spend most of his time stopping them looking at porn and helping those not so bight kids who were not looking at porn thru their work.

He was an EXELENT techer, but due to this retarded system of grouping left me and two of my friends in the class to get on with it. Fine.... But this just results in slacking. and finding more interesting things todo (like how to look at Porn without the content Blocker kicking it......)

End result being. I got a B in a subject thats meant to take two years in two months. why? because i walked into the IT room at 12.30pm on a friday. Said hi to the IT Teacher who was a great guy. Kicked some year 7 off flash games and stole his machine. did some work. helped out some of the kids who has their IT lessons after lunch on a friday. talked to the Teacher. Left at 3:30. the second year GCSE class who had their IT lesson after lunch had finished by the start of January with my help. It's ALL about WHO's in the Class and the teachers

[SilentMike]

my first year of sixthform and i did the ict alevel. I hated it it.

I restarted sixth form again and now im doing a computing alevel. Its loads better than the crappy ict alevel "business" course.

[GeeDee]

Originally posted by Switch`
I think it has alot todo with the teaching staff and Grouping for class's. for some arcane reason my school used a grouping system for IT and Science's at GCSE level based on which group you were put into in year 7..... which was based on Friends and which school you came from (put the kids from the same primary school in the same group etc)

I'm not going to defend mixed ability groups - I happen to think streaming works out better. But I would say that - as would most of the people on these boards - we were all in the upper groups.

Where streaming groups based on ability becomes a problem is with the lower groups. I don't know if you've ever been in an entirely lower ability group in a comprehensive school but it's not good. It basically becomes more like baby sitting for the teacher and there's very little time to get much teaching in there after all the crowd control and attempts to get the ones who WILL just run riot to calm down or get them out. Therefore, the lower ability kids who would love to actually get some learning into their lessons end up having to wait 90% of the time out while the troublemakers are sorted.

Mixed groups is an attempt to alleviate this as much as possible by mixing the abilities up and gives everyone a fairer chance of getting as much learning time as possible. Unfortunately it's weighted towards the lower abilities, as things will obviously need to be explained several times, or in greater detail - which might not have been required in an all higher ability group.

Either way, streamed groups are weighted more towards the higher abilities and mixed groups towards the lower. It's just a question of which way the school feels they need to go. Mixed groups aren't used just because schools are too stupid to work out the difference though. Switch's school obviously used a combination of the two. :)

[Switch`]

yeah. if the subect was compulsary (IT, Science's, English, RE, French....(maths being an exception)) then we were in thease silly groups. funnily enough i wrote the title 4 times (thats it) in year 11 maths(it got so bad that people would litterally stand up and walk out of the class, get some food and come back, we grouped two tables together and played card games, once a impromtu DnD game(this class was a joke)) (retarded school gave us a brand new maths teacher who couldnt teach to save his or anyone else's life) i mean REALLY what school gives the top set a brand new teacher!!!! when their current one was producing A*'s!!!
half that class failed GCSE Maths..... top set...failing.

*ahem*

[Er00]

I really wish we got streamed at school actually, we did at primary school in year 5 and 6 and it worked so well, means that those who are good at say maths, don't get bored, while those who struggle get the help they need without wasting time of the others. In year 9 we got put in entirely arbitary groups, I'm still not entirely sure what they were based on....we had one groups for maths/sciences/PE (yeah...I'm not sure why PE's included either, I guess worked out best for timetabling...), then another for English/Geography/History....It was just a completely stupid way of grouping us, they may as well have not bothered tbh...

[Er00]

I really wish we got streamed at school actually, we did at primary school in year 5 and 6 and it worked so well, means that those who are good at say maths, don't get bored, while those who struggle get the help they need without wasting time of the others. In year 9 we got put in entirely arbitary groups, I'm still not entirely sure what they were based on....we had one groups for maths/sciences/PE (yeah...I'm not sure why PE's included either, I guess worked out best for timetabling...), then another for English/Geography/History....It was just a completely stupid way of grouping us, they may as well have not bothered tbh...

[Rhi]

*weeps*

year...eights (i think)...know more html than i do!

[Er00]

To build a website google is the only tool you need, seriously, as long as you have a vague idea what you want to do, just search and you will find a page telling you how to do it ;)

[Rhi]

yea i guess so...it's just freaking me out how much more they know at this stage in their education than we did when we were in year 8!

we did mail merge...for weeks on end...when it really wasn't that hard....while they're being all whizzy with photoshop! dammit, they have much more fun than we did :p

[Er00]

By Photoshop you mean crappy graphics programs that it's impossible to do anything with yeah? :P

I think they're all serif ones, but I can't check because for some reason this school computer appears to have no programs on it. I just recall being very proud when I managed to make an animated gif using one of the graphics programs at school, it took a lot of browsing different menues etc to figure it out!

[Zenith]

Streaming or setting by ability "just works" and I have no idea why it has fallen from favour.

My school had setting for Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology (this was in the days before combined scince).
Maths had 3 sets - Upper, Middle, Lower.
Upper took papers 3 & 4 = Max grade A, min grade D
Middle took papers 2 & 3 = Max grade B, min grade E
Lower took papers 1 & 2 = Max grade C, min grade F (fail).

Basically, if you were thick at maths, you got put into the lower set and you could still get a C grade if you worked hard at it.
If you were a hotshot at maths, you *HAD* to put the effort in to get A,B,C or D otherwise you failed outright.
It was much the same for the sciences. Due to the way that the options were laid out, everyone HAD to take a science so the school came up with Set 1 and Set 2 for each science (6 classes in all). The sneaky thing was that no-one knew which set was which until the year started. I was in Set 2 which turned out to be the "knuckle down" set. Set 1 was the "mess about" Set.

The difference in grades was startling. Set 2's generally got A-C's while Set 1's tended to only just get C grades.

Bear in mind that this was summer 1989, the second year of GCSE's and is generally agreed to be THE hardest marked year for GCSE's EVER. The first year (1988) was marked lightly so that it appeared that more people were passing. The following year, they marked REALLY strictly. People who were on target for 9 A's were lucky to get 1 or 2. NO-ONE got straight A's in my school year. That has never happened before or since.

[Rhi]

Originally posted by Er00
By Photoshop you mean crappy graphics programs that it's impossible to do anything with yeah? :P

I think they're all serif ones, but I can't check because for some reason this school computer appears to have no programs on it. I just recall being very proud when I managed to make an animated gif using one of the graphics programs at school, it took a lot of browsing different menues etc to figure it out!

nope, actually photoshop! shockingly...

[Er00]

So..um..why do we not have any programs on teh computers in here....*wonders*....

Do they really just want us to sit on teh interweb and play freecell? XD

Bearing in mind this computer doesn't even have word installed, though the other computers in here do...

[Mango]

teachers definately need lessons more than the pupils. my class spent the whole of AS ict messing around typing "gay" randomly in each others courseworks and still got A grades, and the theory lessons were a joke, nothing i didnt already know... good times tho